It looked like a solo day for me. I had planned on going over the material from the newly available Glasgow Messer text. Just about when I was halfway through it Chris showed up.

2 rounds shadow boxing
2 rounds boxing
2 rounds savate
We went fairly hard these 4 rounds. I wa already feeling a bit under the weather but at the end of 4 I was totally spent. Chris is really showing improvement on his kicking combinations.

We then worked on some power generation theory for the shillelagh and that lead to us working with the short cudgel or kippen. We went through the choke series and did some other grappling type stuff such as stick assisted double legs.

This was some of the hardest sparring we have ever done. By the end of rounds 6 we were truly shot…so we did one more.

It was the first non-freezing day in a long time here in NE Ohio so we went outside with the longswords and sparth axes for a little work. We still had to train in the street though. Not enough snow had melted yet.

We went through some grappling with the longsword plays then let them start to flow organically out of some half speed bouting.

We finished out the session with sparth axe. We did some bouting but our main focus this time was the charge, both performing it and defending against it.

We started out the session working on some interesting old Russian stick exercises and then applying them to the mountain axe.

Last week I bought a number of table runners to use as sashes or faja…so we worked quite a bit on our technique using the navaja and faja together. We used two methods, first the faja n the off hand and then the faja stretched between the hands with the navaja in the right hand. We did some bouting both with and without the sash.

Next up we worked on the recortes as a counter to both a straight thrust and a jiro. Once the recortes was finished we were throwing a rear leg fouette at the opponents midsection. Fun mixing savate and navaja play:)

We finished the session with some drills developed around the madeja ( skein of yarn, figure-8 ) A thrust comes in and the counter is made in the madeja pattern and a series of cuts follow all along the same pattern as the defender moves either to the outside or the inside of the attackers blade.

So a short session, about an hour and a half, but we got some good navaja work in.

Some days it is a good idea just to work on what you already know. It is easy to fall into the trap of being a technique collector. For unarmed, I like the following progression that we used on Sunday…boxing then add kicking then add the grappling. Then if we go further add the weapons in like we did…grappling is less attractive with the navaja pointed at you but for some reason happens frequently int eh e-tool bouting, most likely due to the slower speed of the heavier weapon.

2 rounds boxing
2 rounds savate
2 rounds combat sambo
The combat sambo lead us to a good deal of fighting against the wall both on the feet and on the ground. This lead to some work on using the wall to help get better position and or leverage both on the feet and on the ground.
1 round navaja and faja vs same
1 round navaja vs same
2 rounds of e-tool

The e-tool fight is much like the knife fight. often there is not way to come out unscathed. At time the only option was to come out of an engagement with less damage than you inflict.